Is it the time of the holidays already again?
Holidays are the time everyone waits for and whether you like it or not, this time probably reminds you of quality time spent with your family, gifts, peace, and the stress of time clocking out.
Lawyers usually have a busy schedule year long and holidays are the only free time they can use for their own personal life. Naturally, lawyers have so much to look into and it becomes difficult to close out things for holidays.
In order to have peace during and after holidays, it’s best to slack off things before you take leave, but for some, it becomes difficult to carry out the procedure. Don’t worry, we have got you covered. Here’s what you can do before going on holiday in order to streamline your workflow for holidays and come to a sorted workflow after the holidays.
Here are some tips to ensure work-life stability and streamlined workflow after the holidays.
You must be thinking that this is not something new, every productivity tips blog includes this point, but we are here to help with where your to-do list lacks. Making a random task list is not enough, start by sorting down all the tasks that you are trying to complete, then which needs to be done, and which you haven’t started yet.
Strike out the things that can wait till next year and tell your employees to strike out other tasks that do not add any value then prioritize them, while making a list we forget to prioritize tasks number-wise.
Prioritization is important, as you can complete tasks that are more important than others. Otherwise, you’ll end up doing tasks that can wait for a new year or something that means less to the firm in the current situation
- Clear out your schedule
Holiday time means quality time, also conceivable chances for vacation when it comes to attorneys. Make sure that you plan everything for your vacation in advance if you intend to take time off for the holidays.
This means delegating your work, setting things up, streamlining workflow ahead of time, or reducing your cases for the time being so that you don’t have to stress about returning to a pile of files.
It’s vital to clear your schedule out with old responsibilities before the holidays and check if you’re conflicting with someone else’s calendar or if there’s anything that needs to be done from your side.
A lot of changes happen over the holidays. Generally, people travel more, working with different schedules and different environments may be from different places, as well. If you are more of a generalist, be prepared for all the changes in your workload with the holidays – especially in your actual practice areas.
- Show appreciation to your team
Your team has stood by your side all year long assisting you at every stage of your case. It’s time to show appreciation for the hard work they have done for you. Before leaving for the holidays, make sure to make your team feel heard, appreciated, and warm.
You can start by having a holiday dinner, which will be a little informal and make them feel open about discussing any issue they are facing while working. Tell them that you are open to any new suggestions and that their suggestions are appreciated.
If hosting a dinner party is now difficult for you, you can also give out little holiday gifts to your support staff. If you are thinking of what to give, don’t worry, we got you covered there too. We have carefully curated a blog on the best gift ideas for lawyers this season to have a look from here. Hopefully, you will find the perfect gift for your employees.
- Move your operations to legal tech solutions
Sometimes lawyers end up doing the work they can easily delegate to technology. Automation these days is the key to better productivity and efficiency. Why waste countless hours doing work that doesn’t need your approval or your time to check every insignificant detail. Before going on holidays, move such operations to legal solutions like automated email, and send emails to your clients during holidays by the automated email system.
One such great example is case management software, it helps lawyers to automate their billing and payments, easy document management, streamline invoicing with a bulk invoice generator, and being on the cloud its biggest advantage is you can access your all document, details, and contacts from anywhere in the world without having to sit in an office.
Legal tech solutions will make your holidays more peaceful with their advanced benefits and easy user interface. We have an entire list of different tech tools and applications to help you get sorted when it comes to legal technology. Read, the best applications and software for lawyers.
- Use this time for feedback and planning for the next few months
During holidays everyone is in a relaxed mood, this time you can utilize this by doing a proper analysis of your firm, analysis means where each employee stands, what the areas they need to improve in, what changes they would like to see next year, and an overview perspective of what all changes to be made. You should also ask for detailed feedback from your employees and how you can attain employee satisfaction.
Since you have done analysis and you know where you are lacking, you can find solutions to your problems. For some, before going for holidays is the perfect opportunity to be more organized as they would come back to a clear picture of what follows and if you are from that group then this time is perfect for planning how to streamline your workflow in the coming year.
Having all things planned in advance will help you look at future projects more clearly. Each department can plan out necessary things so that when you are finished planning you can easily start next month without sitting and wondering what to do.
Conclusion
Holidays are a time to relax, rejuvenate, and reduce stress. It’s very important for professionals like lawyers to have proper intervals and gaps to bring down their stress levels. The legal industry has constant pressure on their professional need and it’s not good for their health to be under stress all the time, that’s why I have included these 5 tips to prepare for your holidays to have a stress-free vacation and come to a streamlined workflow.
Slacking off things from your lists also makes you free from your current workload and frees your time for things that are going to pile up after the holidays. Hope this blog helps you in some or other ways.
Happy Holidays from CaseFox.